#writing

"Here's a haiku/palindrome I wrote called, "Obsession."Bob, Bob, Bob, Bob, Bob,Bob, Bob, Bob, Bob, Bob, Bob, Bob,Bob, Bob, Bob, Bob, Bob"

"If you like fantasy and you want to be the next Tolkien, don’t read big Tolkienesque fantasies — Tolkien didn’t read big Tolkienesque fantasies, he read books on Finnish philology. Go and read outside of your comfort zone, go and learn stuff."

"A young writer is easily tempted by the allusive and ethereal and ironic and reflective, but the declarative is at the bottom of most good writing."

"I have claimed that Escape is one of the main functions of fairy-stories, and since I do not disapprove of them, it is plain that I do not accept the tone of scorn or pity with which 'Escape' is now so often used. Why should a man be scorned if, finding himself in prison, he tries to get out and go home? Or if he cannot do so, he thinks and talks about other topics than jailers and prison-walls?"

"I'm an aspiring writer.' I hate that phrase. You're either a writer or you're not."

"Would you like to know the great drama of my life? It is that I have put my genius into my life...I have put only my talent into my works."

"The best way to become acquainted with a subject is to write about it."

"Writer’s block is only a failure of the ego."

"I never exactly made a book. It's rather like taking dictation. I was given things to say."

"I want to be clear about this. If you wrote from experience, you'd get maybe one book, maybe three poems. Writers write from empathy."

"Your current circumstances are part of your redemption story He is writing."

"Anyone who has no need of anybody but himself is either a beast or a God."Aristotle"

"Writers cannot choose their own mood: with them it is not always hide-tide, nor --thank Heaven!--always Storm."

"The writer walks out of his workroom in a daze. He wants a drink. He needs it. It happens to be a fact that nearly every writer of fiction in the world drinks more whisky than is good for him. He does it to give himself faith hope and courage. A person is a fool to become a writer. His only compensation is absolute freedom. He has no master except his own soul and that I am sure is why he does it."

"At times I believed that the last page of my book and the last page of my life were one and the same, that when my book ended I'd end, a great wind would sweep through my rooms carrying the pages away, and when the air cleared of all those fluttering white sheets the room would be silent, the chair where I sat empty."

"You know, it's a funny thing about writers. Most people don't stop to think of books being written by people much like themselves. They think that writers are all dead long ago--they don't expect to meet them in the street or out shopping. They know their stories but not their names, and certainly not their faces. And most writers like it that way."

"Writing is a concentrated form of thinking...a young writer sees that with words he can place himself more clearly into the world. Words on a page, that's all it takes to help him separate himself from the forces around him, streets and people and pressures and feelings. He learns to think about these things, to ride his own sentences into new perceptions."

"Only amateurs say that they write for their own amusement. Writing is not an amusing occupation. It is a combination of ditch-digging, mountain-climbing, treadmill and childbirth. Writing may be interesting, absorbing, exhilarating, racking, relieving. But amusing? Never!"

"No passion in the world is equal to the passion to alter someone else's draft."

"I wrote you a love letter. I used invisible ink to show I was being transparent with my feelings. And also to hide my feelings."